“You’ve killed Robin,” she said, quietly and coldly.

Her brain and heart seemed to stand still, like things staring into an immense voice.  They had come to the end of their road.

“You’ve killed Robin,” she said again.

“Rosamund——­”

The body in front of her moved to come towards her.  Then she uttered the fearful cry which was heard by Mr. Darlington on his way home from the Deanery, and she fled from the body which had slain Robin.

That purely instinctive action was the beginning of Dion’s punishment.  A cry, the movement of a body, and everything which meant life to him, everything for which he had lived, was gone.  But he followed Rosamund with a sort of blind obstinacy, driven as she was by instinct.  Dimly he knew that he was a man who only merited compassion, all the compassion of the world.  He had no horror of himself, but only a horror of that Fate to which mortals have to submit and which had overtaken him in a shining moment of happiness.  The gun accident of which his little son had been the victim presented itself to his erring mind as a terrific stroke from above, or from beyond, falling equally upon father and child.  He was not responsible for it.  The start of a frightened pony, its sudden attempt to bolt, the pulling of a rein which had brought the animal against him just as he was lifting his gun to fire at a rising bird—­what were those things?  Only the clumsy machinery used by implacable Fate to bring about that which had been willed somewhere, far off in the dark and the distance.

He must tell Rosamund, he must tell Rosamund.

* * * * *

Annie and the nurse came out to the edge of the broad path which ran along the front of the house and peered into the darkness.  Annie was crying and holding on to the nurse, whose almost fierce determination faded as she confronted the mystery of the night which hid her master and mistress.

“H’sh, Annie,” she whispered.  “Where can they be?  Listen, I tell you!”

Annie strove to choke down her sobs.

“I can hear—­some one,” whispered the nurse, after a moment.  “Don’t you.  Listen, I tell you!  Right over by the wall near the Bishop’s!”

The sound of steps indeed came to them through the darkness.  Annie broke away from the nurse.

“I’m frightened!  I’m frightened!  I don’t know what’s come to them,” she whispered through her teeth, resisting the impulse to cry out.  “Come in, Nurse, for God’s sake!”

She shrank into the house.  The nurse stood where she was for a moment, but when she heard the steps a little nearer to her she, too, was overcome by fear and followed Annie trembling, shutting the door behind her.